Of course, impossible to know what exactly your T meant (I'd suggest asking him to clarify, be interested to know what he says!), but I imagine that my male T can't - or might have a really hard time:
- quite understand hormonal elements to my mood swings (I don't, uh, really raise the fact that my anger may be amplified by PMS or anything of that nature)
- understand firsthand what it's like to walk around in society in a female body, with all the baggage that can bring
- understand/appreciate what it's like to have/make/maintain female-female friendships and bonds, and how they may (or may not) differ from "guys"
- understand the subtleties of what I'm trying to communicate "between the lines," kind of sexist of me to think that has to do with his gender - but I think it has to do with the socialization of male communication, not necessarily caused by being male but perhaps accentuated?
- touch/offer comforting things - I think my T is REALLY wary of being too "comforting" and I think he would NEVER touch in a comforting way, even if I asked, this is for my safety, but I think its also for his - even though male or female Ts can "misuse" touch on ANY client (male or female) I'd conjecture (I have no evidence for this) that male Ts treating female patients might be conventionally considered more "at risk" for liability or complaints AND for transference/counter-transference dynamics. Even though those can happen with any dyad, I think if the T and client are 'mixed gender' and heterosexual, it can be a can of worms that is best examined without bringing touch into the equation to confuse things.
These are just my thoughts about my T who happens to be male - I think gender does play a role in any relationship, but its going to depend a lot on the individual, too. Interestingly, my previous T was also a male but he was gay and much older than me. The male/female dynamic felt very different to me than with my current T, who is within my age range (a bit older) and who I understand to be hetero.
If you enter into therapy with a bias (we all have them) then you might look for evidence that supports it and unconsciously create dynamics that support it, without conducting open "experiments" that could disconfirm it... That said, I think my T is very sensitive to my emotions when he understands them - but he is a little slow to "pick up" on what I'm trying to express and figure it out. I don't know if that's b/c he's a dude or not, but I sometimes am like "well, he's a dude, so maybe I need to be super direct about this..." and, generally, that has helped. In general, perhaps being super direct helps people "get the message"...even though I was socialized to not really say things so directly, especially if it involved FEELINGS (gasp!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Petra5ed
My male therapist recently made a comment that female T's can do things male T's cannot and vice versa. I didn't push this because I wasn't interested at the time, but I thought it to be a load of crap. Perhaps making broad generalizations there might be some statistically significant differences, but does that mean no woman could do male T things, and no male T could do female T things? Wouldn't male and female T's be socialized to act differently? Or do you think there are fundamental to the core differences bw the sexes... i.e. is it possible my brutish male therapist might not be able to understand my delicate feminine ways?
What do you suppose he meant? My personal opinion is the only thing a male or female could do that the other gender couldn't is satisfy a clients personal bias. I.e. if I enter therapy with a bias that "men aren't sensitive enough to understand me" then only a female T could be sensitive enough in my mind while I hold that bias. Just curious if anyone can think of other examples where penis' and vajay's have separate (but equal?) powers in psychotherapy.
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